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[3ds Max] [Skyrim] Video: Animation Tutorial


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Well, the odds seem to be in favour of an animation export issue.... :(

 

Though I had some issues with the script too, essentially with a scene marker getting oddly positioned at times (which I had overlooked of course, focused as I was on collision).

 

But once that was fixed and I replaced my anim with one of Arrok's, the collision issue seemed to be gone.

 

I solved it for my anims by using TranslateTo instead of SplineTranslateTo (TranslateTo voids actors' collisions apparently) and adding SetVehicle to glue my actors to the scene marker. Now actors get properly positioned in game and stay where I want them to be,, but that's only because I exploit TranslateTo's side-effects.

 

I'll get some shut-eye, hoping things get clearer tomorrow...

 

Many thanks again for lending me an ear, MadMansGun :)

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hey guys,

 

I have a couple of questions for better experienced modders if someone is still reading this:

 

1. I feel stupid just having to ask the question, but is there a way to duplicate or copy/paste keys when they've been created with controllers? (3DS Max 2012)

I can copy/duplicate keys I've created for bones with a Vanilla skeleton (hold shift + left click + drag) but that doesn't work with the Pornphile's controller rigs... I'm sure I'm missing something obvious...

 

2. Again, using Pornphile's controller rig, is it ok to use the Helpers or change custom attributes like the elbow swivel without disabling IK?..

 

Many thanks in advance for your help!

 

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57 minutes ago, Wolftracks said:

(hold shift + left click + drag)

that should of worked, so i don't know why it did not. (but i don't use rigs so i may be missing something)

have you tried highlighting the key frame/s first?

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19 hours ago, Wolftracks said:

Hey, MadMansGun, thanks again...

 

Yep, I do highlight keys before I try duplicating them - I probably tried every combination of keys I could think of... I'm down to hand copying axis transforms from one key to another... that takes forever...

 

Click the key you want duplicated as described. Hold down shift (Below Caps Lock) and drag the key to the frame You want. That is how I do it.

 

I use Pornphile's rig with the schlong suggested by Nibbles and it works perfectly.

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Just now, NCK30 said:

 

Click the key you want duplicated as described. Hold down shift (Below Caps Lock) and drag the key to the frame You want. That is how I do it.

 

I use Pornphile's rig with the schlong suggested by Nibbles and it works perfectly.

 

To make the process that much easier also use the following scripts and modifiers.

 

 

PEN Attribute Holder 2 - Extra options for fingers and so on - Recommended from the main page. I have admitted the download

 

- CopyPasteTransforms - Essential to copy hand and feet placements - Recommended by CEO 0S. I have admitted the download

 

 

Both files must be put in the following directory. They will work the next time You start 3DS Max.

 

Autodesk\3ds Max 2012\Scripts\Startup 

PEN_Attribute_holder_2.06.zip COPY PASTE TRANSFORMS.zip

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Hey thanks, NCK30,

 

My mistake was trying to copy keys in the dope sheet, this apparently I can't do, but HoldShift+LeftClick+Drag does work in the bottom timeline... I stupidly hadn't tried in there because keys are barely visible when the timeline is too long.

 

Thanks for the files too, yes I do use the PEN attribute holder which is absolutely great, can't remember if I added the Copy-Paste transforms in my install, but I probably did since I can copy-paste fingers attributes from one key to another.

 

I have a couple more questions for you if you don't mind:

 

- Zaz (or Leito - can't remember who mentioned this) said it was not necessary to save and reload anims in .xaf format before exporting from 3DS 2012, and most of the time, I don't need to. But when I do save and reload .xaf files in my scenes, I've noticed that all keys disappear from the dope sheet. The animations work fine, but it becomes virtually impossible to tweak them once they've been reloaded because keys are no longer visible - neither bone keys nor controller keys. Does that happen to you too?

 

- When we use a basic Vanilla rig (no controllers, just 99 bones) can we safely move the NPC COM bone? Like up and down or left and right, when we create jump or climb up animations? I've noticed the Gizmos will only let me rotate that bone, not move it - but I can move that bone around in the curve editor. Is that how we make a jumping anim, by moving up or down the NPC COM bone - or am I using the wrong bone?

 

- and last question: do you need to disable IK to use the "helpers"?

 

Many thanks again, guys!

 

 

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2 hours ago, Wolftracks said:

- When we use a basic Vanilla rig (no controllers, just 99 bones) can we safely move the NPC COM bone? Like up and down or left and right, when we create jump or climb up animations? I've noticed the Gizmos will only let me rotate that bone, not move it - but I can move that bone around in the curve editor. Is that how we make a jumping anim, by moving up or down the NPC COM bone - or am I using the wrong bone?

yes, that is the bone to use. i don't know how you work with them in rigs, but just make sure the root node is not getting moved or rotated when you move the com.

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30 minutes ago, MadMansGun said:

yes, that is the bone to use. i don't know how you work with them in rigs, but just make sure the root node is not getting moved or rotated when you move the com.

 

Thanks a bunch again for the tip, MadMansGun!..

 

In rigs, we can move some controllers, NPC com is one of those we can move. Without the controller rigs though, I am careful only to rotate bones - never move them - thus my question about NPC COM, because I just couldn't figure out how to make a jump anim by only rotating that bone...

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On 7/30/2019 at 7:21 PM, Wolftracks said:

Hey thanks, NCK30,

 

My mistake was trying to copy keys in the dope sheet, this apparently I can't do, but HoldShift+LeftClick+Drag does work in the bottom timeline... I stupidly hadn't tried in there because keys are barely visible when the timeline is too long.

 

Thanks for the files too, yes I do use the PEN attribute holder which is absolutely great, can't remember if I added the Copy-Paste transforms in my install, but I probably did since I can copy-paste fingers attributes from one key to another.

 

I have a couple more questions for you if you don't mind:

 

- Zaz (or Leito - can't remember who mentioned this) said it was not necessary to save and reload anims in .xaf format before exporting from 3DS 2012, and most of the time, I don't need to. But when I do save and reload .xaf files in my scenes, I've noticed that all keys disappear from the dope sheet. The animations work fine, but it becomes virtually impossible to tweak them once they've been reloaded because keys are no longer visible - neither bone keys nor controller keys. Does that happen to you too?

 

- When we use a basic Vanilla rig (no controllers, just 99 bones) can we safely move the NPC COM bone? Like up and down or left and right, when we create jump or climb up animations? I've noticed the Gizmos will only let me rotate that bone, not move it - but I can move that bone around in the curve editor. Is that how we make a jumping anim, by moving up or down the NPC COM bone - or am I using the wrong bone?

 

- and last question: do you need to disable IK to use the "helpers"?

 

Many thanks again, guys!

 

 

 

I don't use the dope sheet / curve editor. I animate with the timeline at the bottom. I know that the animations can become more smooth when using dope sheet. But I find that most animations look good if they are not completely smooth. I just use the auto key tap for single actor animations / sometimes the set key with multiple actors.

 

Copy-Paste transforms are for hands and feet. Pen attribute holder can copy finger allignments not the hands / feet.

 

I don't know what xaf files are. Exporting is very simple with Havok Content Tools. I save each actor under a _Female or _Male file. Then I can simply export at will without the need for renaming bones all the time. You see that in Pornphile's rig the male's bones are renamed with 2_ infront of all the names. When exporting I need to rename all the bones and save. From there I can export all I want.

 

At the same time I can have Skyrim running and alt/tab out of the game, make changes and alt/tab back in. Forward to next stage and back. Then the changes are there. No need to start Skyrim 50-100 times.

 

You can safely move the NPC COM bone with Pornphile's rig and probably also the vanilla rig. Just do not touch the root bone, as MadMansGun said. I made that mistake early on.

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  • 1 month later...

Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you all, and especially Pornphile, for the great tutorial, the amazing tools you created and the countless useful advices you shared. It's all very straightforward, clear (even for a non-English speaker like me) and precise, and on top of it still available after all these years!..

 

For a long time, I've been wanting to learn animations and I've finally done it (at least for the basics) thanks to you all!

 

Here's a small sample of my first animation ever, which I just uploaded on the Nexus:

 

1884387037_TitresvidoWaltz-1.jpg.0138b5289efc1098d1e5c4de049e9ac8.jpg

 

Ahem, no idea how to get the YouTube video to show up here - so here's the link to it:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwlRFopPBig

 

Cheers to all!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hey guys,

 

Not sure if anybody's still around who can help me, but just in case:

 

I've been trying to rescale one of my two actors directly in 3DS while creating the animation.

 

The idea is to make the female smaller than the male in 3DS to better adjust positioning for different size actors directly in the animation - somewhat like what we do to resize female hands to 85% wile working on he anim in 3DS, and then resizing the hands back to 100% before exporting. This gives great results.

 

I believe CEO has been doing somehting like that in OSEX.

 

So what I've been doing is scale down the NPC_COM bone to 95%, do the anim, and then rescale it all to 100% before export - then using script to make sure the ingame actors match the animation scale. The animation loads alright, the actor is scaled properly but positioning is messed up, not distorted, just misplaced.

 

Maybe I'm doing it wrong, maybe I'm forgetting something, or maybe I should use NPC_Root instead of NPC_COM?..

 

Can any of you give some advice or directions?

 

Many thanks in advance!

 

 

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3 hours ago, Wolftracks said:

Maybe I'm doing it wrong, maybe I'm forgetting something, or maybe I should use NPC_Root instead of NPC_COM?..

 

Can any of you give some advice or directions?

"NPC_Root" is what you need to rescale for that sort of work.

rescaleing the com node will not give you the right offset because the link between root and com will not get adjusted.

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Hey MadMansGun, thanks :)

 

that's what I figured out after trying different approaches, and it works great with Pornphile's rig too, all you need to do is scale down both the NPC_Root and Pornphile's controller rig's root_controller to the same value in 'World' view before animating. Still exploring all the possibilies, thanks!

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  • 4 months later...
On 3/11/2020 at 5:25 AM, burger3370 said:

Hi everyone,

 

I got a problem with exporting animations into kf file.

 

when doing that, I always got 116bytes(1KB) kf file eventually.

 

Could anyone tell me what happened to this situation?

have you checked your export settings?

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  • 2 months later...

Just a little tip:

When using the pornphile rig, you can use Import -> Replace to get the XPMSE skeleton in.

Need to have a nif importer, Import -> Replace, choose the XPMSE Skeleton.nif, make sure to tick Skeleton on the importer and import.

Now you can throw SoS or UUNP meshes or whatever at it and get perfect weight painting for the Schlong and all. (Tick import skinning and untick import skeleton when importing meshes)

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  • 10 months later...

I need a little help. I'm trying to make something like a "We Are Not Worthy" idle, as per Wayne's World. I followed the instructions as closely as I can, but when I do the mt_idle test, my dude just goes t-pose whenever he idles.

 

Fair enough. My first guess was that I'd made an LE idle, so I ran

 

 HavokBehaviorPostProcess.exe --platformamd64 idle.hkx mt_idle64.hkx

 

and got

 

Could not load resource: idle.hkx.  Does file exist?  Is it a proper Havok file?

 

Well, the file exists, and it's close enough to proper havok that I can load it in havok preview tool and see all the frames. So I figure I'm close. I just need a bit of help getting over the last hurdle.

 

I do have some warnings in the HCT export process, but I don't have enough experience to tell which are significant and which can be ignored,

 

Spoiler


========== Started: Sat Mar 27 17:30:07 2021, Configuration: Animations ==========

 Create Skeletons Filter
    [0xabba911c] Warning : Filter not supported by current product selection
    [0xabba89d9] Warning : Bone NPC Root [Root] has no bind pose. All bones in the skeleton will use their first keyframe as their bind pose.
    Root Node Name:NPC Root [Root]
    Num Bones: 84
 Create Animations Filter
    [0xabba911c] Warning : Filter not supported by current product selection
     Animation
        Length: 6.666667
        Frames: 201
        Annotation: present
 Extract Motion Filter
    [0xabba911c] Warning : Filter not supported by current product selection
    Motion extracted using -1 samples
 Spline Compression Filter
    [0xabba911c] Warning : Filter not supported by current product selection
     Compression
        Number of blocks: 1
        Size of largest block (PlayStation(R)3 SPU): 46128 bytes.
        Original Size: 810520 bytes. Compressed Size: 46116 bytes.
        Compression Ratio: 17.575678:1.
 Footstep Analysis Filter
    [0xabba911c] Warning : Filter not supported by current product selection
 Loop Animations Filter
    [0xabba911c] Warning : Filter not supported by current product selection
 Prune Types Filter
    Removing hkxEnvironment ("Environment Data")
    Removing hkxScene ("Scene Data")
    Removing Resource Data completely.
    Removing 1 skeletons.
    Removing 0 mesh attachments.
    Removing 1 Transform and 0 Float  identity binding index arrays from 1 bindings(s)
    Removing 0 skins.
 Write to Platform Filter
    Wrote layout for [Tagfile] to file [.\idle.XML].

========== Finished in 00:00:01, 0 Errors, 7 Warnings ==========

 

 

I'm especially worried by that "Filter not supported by current product selection" bit. I have Max 2015 which was the latest version that still supported publicly available HCT, or so I thought. (I set this up more than a year ago). So it's possible that I have the wrong Havok plugin, and I'm not sure how I'd verify that.

 

There was also something before that when I first loaded HCT:

 

 3ds Max Scene Export 
    [0xabba78ab] Warning : Note tracks discovered for object and transform controller, please make sure only to use one of them, as appropriate for you usage scenario(Vision Animation/Havok Animation)!
    Exported 455 nodes, 5 node selection sets, 4 materials, 4 meshes, 0 lights, 2 cameras, 4 skin bindings.

 Gathering Filter Changes for Create Skeletons 
Filter Manager ready

 

Again, no idea what is significant and what trivial.

 

[edit]

 

Bah! Ignore my feverish self-pity. ? Turns out the major problem was the wrong version of havok content tools. (Which might even have been right for Fo4 which is what it was set up for, but I definitely needed 2010 to work with hkxcmd.

 

I now have my animation in-game. There's no interpolation at all ... but that's solvable now I can actually see the damn thing working.

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  • 2 months later...

My question is not entirely about animation, although if it is  an animated mesh, then it is possible that way.

 

how to solve the problem with the error exporting the mesh with the skin - failed to find suitable skeleton root

 

I have already made the bone links visible - it does not help.

 

  Thias is only in 2016 max, 2009 - everything is fine. (With the same skeleton and mesh exported through the collade) But to redo it under it, there are 170+ bones on the skeleton., And the collade renames the bones on the skeleton.

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